We know, we know. It’s not a break-up. It’s an indefinite hiatus. But doesn’t that just mean, “Breaking up sounds too divisive, and we’re kinda done, but we don’t want anyone to accuse us of cashing in on the whole ‘reunion’ bandwagon if we do decide to play again. Plus we all like each other and think we’ll probably miss playing together in a few years, and we know the fans will want us to play again, too.” That is what it means, right? Is anyone from Fugazi reading this?
Surely, a show that is the last for the foreseeable future, quite possibly the last ever, would have some marker to set it apart. It would be extra long. Extra loud. Extra tearful. Extra something. They wouldn’t go out without playing “Call the Doctor” and especially not without “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone,” would they? But they did. For much of Sleater-Kinney’s show at the 9:30 Club Thursday night, rescheduled in a hurry after the Fire Marshall cancelled Tuesday’s show, it felt like another go-round of their 2005 tour for The Woods. In fact, they played all ten songs from that record, comprising well over half of the main set.
Watching the band play, it’s no small wonder they’re still so attached to that record. The material on The Woods finally showed, in recorded form, what the band had already become in live shows for quite a while: a lean and muscular rock and roll machine. Calling them a punk band had long ago become a wildly inadequate description. With The Woods, Sleater-Kinney finally had songs that fit the lengthy instrumental interplay (I’m going to refrain from using the “J”-word here out of respect) they’d been moving towards on stage. Thursday, as in their tour last year, the band seemed most at home locked in a tight triangle, playing off one another’s cues, performing in a practice space that just happened to have a thousand excitable fans in it.
The only acknowledgement that there was any special significance to the show came near the end, as Carrie gave thanks to their DC friends and fans that have come out so many times in the past. And that was it, on with the music.
Photo by Flickr user (hannie)
